Holy Buck, Fatman!

Yesterday, while I drove back home from the train station, I was listening to all things considered while enjoying the good weather we’d be having. Normally, the snippets are short but informing and hardly ever infuriate me. However, listening to this over privileged southern white woman mask her racism by justifying a shitty ad against Obama because of what a former preacher in his church had said. “He’s just to extreme for North Carolina” The Ad states. The ad ties Obama with two NC democratic governors who are endorsing Obama. What? Why? What is the reason for this ad?

Huh?

Listening to the woman talk in her demure southern voice just kept getting under my skin. She spoke slowly, choosing her words rather carefully as she didn’t really want people to know what the ad really was about. Of Course, there were a few dog whistles in her carefully chosen words. “Freedom of Speech”, “A State Issue” “About the People of North Carolina”

Having once been a resident of a State I haven’t set foot in since 1996, I knew EXACTLY why she was running this ad. Back in 1996, Jesse “Don’t let THAT Boy Win” Helms was in a tight race for Senate against Harvey Gantt, Former Mayor of Charlotte, NC, successful business owner and a black man. While it was NO SECRET that Helms is one of those Strom Thurmond like southern Good “Ole Boys, he was quite challenged by Gantt and pulled all punches to make sure his base remained in perpetual fear of a black man being charge. During the election, residents of NC were subjected to perpetual ads using multiple racist dog whistles that appealed to Helm’s steady base of rich white people.

Listening to this Linda Davies speak in her slow, calculated way conjured up images of the country club community I once lived in while in High School. People would be cordial, welcoming and rather warm. When they heard my mother was Puerto Rican, well….that was it. We never saw them again. The same thing happened while I attended school there. All the kids were generally nice–except after the project on our genealogy came up. It was reveled that I was half Hispanic and although I’m fair skinned, I was also seen as less of a human in certain circles. I was called “Poodle head Spic” by the boys. There were no other Hispanic people in my school. There were only 5 black kids and they had developed a rather thick skin. Hardly anyone spoke to them and they had a tight nit group. The One black teacher was fired for teaching Black History during February after some parents complained. he was fired because of “alledged abuse of Alchohol.” He was a teacher of mine and I never thought he was ever drunk. In fact, I thought him to be quite interesting as he was involved in the Greensboro Woolworth’s sit in.

I felt like I needed to keep my background a secret, so I did. I identified as Polish from that point on and never spoke of my mothers family. Woman who met my parents would say, ” You know, those people” and my parents knew what they were speaking about. It was an ever present attitude that seemed to drape the State like the Ghost of Jim Crowe. I never understood what that ghost was until some years later.

It’s clear the ghost hasn’t been exercised.